My mom makes a killer pan-seared salmon. I don’t know whether I’ve devoted any time yet here to my mother and her cooking, which is honestly a travesty, since she’s one of the best cooks I know. In that je-ne-sais-quoi Asian mother way, with no recipes or measuring cups in sight, just an unflappable fearlessness and an apparent instinct in the kitchen. (Also, an apron with fluffy sleeves.)

Anyway, her salmon is only one of the many killer foods she has at her disposal, but it has to be one of the best. It has all the most fundamental elements you’d expect from home-cooked Chinese food — healthy slices of ginger, smashed garlic, and green onions, the deafening hiss-roar when cold food meets a smoking-hot wok (when it’s me at the stove, usually also popping oil and yelps of pain), a splash of shaoxing rice wine, a sweet soy sauce glaze. Done right, the fish is melt-in-your-mouth tender, with a crisp and flavorful caramelized skin.

Unfortunately, there are about seventy-four million ways it can be done wrong, all of which I handily did when I asked how to make it a few years ago — cooking it on too high heat and burning it black before the center cooks through, cooking it on too low heat and ending up with a flavorless pink slab, adding too much soy sauce and feeling like you took a wrong turn and ended up in a hibachi joint by accident. And though you can get the hang of it through practice (or through whatever culinary gifts are mysteriously bestowed upon Chinese mothers), sometimes you just don’t feel like sweating over a sizzling wok, right?

Which is why I’ve recently taken to steaming the salmon en papillote. With the one caveat that you don’t get that crisp, buttery salmon skin (arguably the best part, for some people), steaming in parchment is amazing. It’s easy as pie (easier, actually, since pie is kind of hard) and it’s so predictably delicious, every single time. It’s kind of my favorite way ever to make fish, and I’m sharing it over at Verily Magazine this week. You can check it out here, along with a few super easy recipes for broccoli stem salad and steamed broccoli. Hope you’re all having a wonderful week!

So this may seem odd, given my great and well-documented love for Southern comfort food, but I’m not usually the biggest fan of mashed potatoes. To me they’re like the vanilla extract of side dishes — potentially delicious, but usually in need of a partner.

When I was a kid, my dad used to drive me to KFC as a treat once in awhile after piano lessons or swim practices. Man, I got all up in that meal. Two piece meal, all legs, Original, mashed potatoes and coleslaw, please, thank you. But I’m pretty sure I spent half my time (after tearing into those Original chicken legs like a starved shipwreck survivor) trying to figure out how to make those mashed potatoes more palatable. Leftover fried chicken bits mixed in? Spread thick on a biscuit? With … the coleslaw? (I wish I could say I didn’t try that, but I did. … And I liked it.) However you slice it, the mashed potatoes were the one thing on that plate I didn’t devour with single-minded ferocity.

I realize I’m making it sound like I was very into my KFC experience. I was. I was very into KFC.

First, this salt potato thing is genius. Boil the potatoes in well-salted water, pasta-style, and the result is a flavorful skin and a creamier potato. Smash it all up with butter and milk, leaving the skins because you’re lazy because they’re nutritious and have fiber and such. Then, add to that a couple of cloves of golden fried garlic. (That should have been one awesome head of roasted garlic, but I got impatient.) Finally, throw in one pan of sage leaves crisped up in brown butter? It turns out mashed potatoes can do the damn thing all on their own after all.

So I have this problem. Namely, it’s a shocking inability to put a salad in my mouth that is not, at the very least, just as unhealthy than a burger or a pizza or any other non-salad-y unhealthy thing that I would otherwise be eating if I weren’t eating a “healthy” salad. And then I also have this other problem — namely, a shocking inability to leave bacon out of anything and everything. (Creamed corn. Pancakes. … Chocolate chip cookies.) Put those two together and … well, you get this salad. Ta-da! Two wrongs do make a right! (Or two rights make a righter right.)

One of my favorite restaurants back home serves a mean creamed corn. Decadent, syrupy-sweet, almost like a custard. (Whenever my dad orders it and the waitress asks if we’d like dessert, he always says, “Got my dessert right here!” and holds it up with big grin. My father is a faithful subscriber to the school of Jolly Dad Banter.) To me, it’s one of the ultimate comfort foods, a dish that typifies warm, indulgent Southern nourishment.

Last summer, I stumbled upon Carey’s gem of a blog, Reclaiming Provincial, by way of this remarkable ice cream — a honey-thyme & blackberry-goat cheese swirl ice cream. Let’s repeat that and just let it marinate for a second. Honey. Thyme. Blackberries. And goat cheese. I can’t remember the last time I’ve so instantly known that something would be delicious. Creamy yet tangy, probably wonderfully smooth, definitely all-around awesome — I was completely captivated.

So naturally, the moment I found myself with a (highly impractical, highly large, but highly coveted) ice cream maker that I’d thrown on my Amazon wishlist for Christmas and just assumed no one would actually buy for me (Lesson #1 in Amazon-Wishlist-Making: Fully visualize the possibility that you might actually own the thing you are carelessly telling other people to spend their money on for you, also, THANKS MA!) I knew I wanted to try making an ice cream like it. (Sidenote: Unfortunately, this does require an ice cream maker. I know, it’s a bummer if you don’t have one…)

But given that this is not quite the season for blackberries, and given that I had just one more pear leftover from the poached pears I made for these pear and almond galettes back in October (yeah, time stops in the freezer), I didn’t make exactly that ice cream. Instead, I went with a riff on Carey’s that incorporates a lot of the same elements, but rearranged a bit — the goat cheese went in the ice cream base, and I pureed the pear with its poaching syrup to make a pear swirl instead.

I’ve grown up eating savory-sweet food all my life. I thought it was just a quirk of my mother’s to add sugar to everything until I looked up Shanghainese cuisine on Wikipedia a few years ago and found that, evidently, it’s a Shanghai thing. Nowadays, I follow exactly in my mom’s footsteps and add a bit (or a lot) of sugar to almost everything I make — pasta sauces, soy sauce glazes, stews, whatever. I drench my sausage links in maple syrup. (One of my earliest memories is dunking sausage links in maple syrup at Bob Evans. What an underrated restaurant. Did anyone else have family dinners there?)

But the advent of adding savory to sweet only came upon me recently — mainly in the addition of bacon. To everything. Most recently, chocolate chip cookies and pancakes. I can understand feeling squeamish about bacon in chocolate chip cookies — but in pancakes? The bacon’s usually right next to them anyway. It’s only right. It just makes life easier. And infinitely more delicious.

For these, I just used the same go-to “buttermilk” pancake base that I got from Joy the Baker. I’ve never looked back since trying it — it’s fluffy, pillowy-soft but substantial, and it gives your local diner’s version a run for its money. I put buttermilk in quotes because I’ve never actually used buttermilk in it — I always use a mix of half Greek yogurt and half milk (any kind, almond, soy, or regular) and it’s never steered me wrong. I don’t think you’d ever guess it wasn’t buttermilk pancakes straight from IHOP or your favorite diner.

And then I added bacon!

So. Good. (Oh yeah, and that’s me deciding that ramekin of maple syrup wasn’t enough and getting serious with the Aunt Jemima.) Edit: Since a lot of you don’t like savory and sweet together — totally understandable — I just wanted to add that this pancake base is phenomenal with pretty much anything. Slices of banana, blueberries, Reese’s Pieces (!), or, if you’re feeling super decadent, instant espresso, chocolate chips, and Nutella. My personal favorite after bacon might be Reese’s Pieces — seriously awesome. And I never find I need syrup with those, so it might balance out to be better for you?! Relatively.

This is what we’re having for Christmas morning this year — hope you have something equally comforting and cozy lined up, too. And if not, try this. 😉 Merry Christmas, friends!

So I really wasn’t planning on posting this recipe. When I made these bars and this frosting, I felt like I’d already posted more than enough pumpkin recipes, so I just snapped a few lazy shots of them (because I can’t not) and shelved them. But then I tasted these. And I tasted this frosting. And this frosting alone made me go back and scour the few photos I had for something halfway decent. Because this frosting is just too damn good, y’all. Made by Laura at Tutti Dolci, it’s maple syrup, and brown butter, and cream cheese, all whipped into the most decadent, satisfyingly complex frosting imaginable. It can’t not be posted, because the whole world needs to know about it. So here’s an extra little mid-week post, in all its poorly photographed glory. I know I’ll have some leftover pumpkin after Thanksgiving to use on making these bars, so if you do too, I highly recommend trying this remarkable frosting on it.

It’s almost Thanksgiving! So this week I thought I’d post on what seems to be the Thanksgiving vegetable of the year. If last week was about bucking trends (or being unable to participate), this week is definitely all about falling in line with them. At this point, I think I may be the last blog on the Internet not to have done a post on these toy cabbages. But just in case you’re not already Brussels’ed out, here’s several more ways to roast them — as chips and as hearts, and in three different flavors. (In other words, if you’re not Brussels’ed out, after this you will definitely be.)

So, first week of work down and I’m still alive! It’s true that it’s a little overwhelming, but lots of things make it more than okay — foremost that I’m lucky to be working with great people who don’t mind that I have no idea what’s going on yet. But also — what gets me excited in any situation, of course — food. Like ordering food on the firm. (Staying late is so okay when I can get sushi fo’ FREE.) And Keurig machines in our kitchens! And, lastly but not least-ly, this pumpkin spice latte syrup.

Oh man, these cupcakes. These cupcakes! I know there are a million pumpkin cupcake recipes out there, but this one is special to me, if only because it took me about six tries to get right. (Which is kind of weird, now that I think about it, given that I just said that there are a million other recipes I could have chosen.)